The combination of eCircle’s digital marketing applications — coupled with Aprimo’s Integrated Marketing Management strategy — will focus on enabling marketers to deliver highly targeted, consistent and personalized campaigns that are integrated across all channels. Additionally, users can leverage Teradata Aster’s big data analytics from any data type and Teradata’s data warehousing for deep customer insights.

Digital marketers also will have the option to use the eCircle solution as a standalone offering.

“The key [to leveraging Big Data] is to analyze the huge amounts of data that now exist, not just from purchases, but from sources you might not think about: Individual Facebook posts, automotive computers, etc. to drive brand awareness whenever and wherever your customers and prospects are,” noted John Sawyer, Director, Global Corporate Communications, Aprimo. “These applications work just as well — if not better — with the wealth of data in B2B as they do in B2C. Aprimo and eCircle will work with Teradata Aster to help clients truly understand their customers and implement highly-targeted and personalized campaigns that reflect that understanding.”

The addition of eCircle will triple Aprimo’s European team to more than 450 personnel. Aprimo and eCircle currently work with a variety of brands, including Merrill Lynch, Warner Bros., International Speedway Corporation, Bank of America, Lending Tree, Samsung, The British Museum, The Football Association and Virgin Limited Edition.

When the deal closes, eCircle’s current senior leadership team will join Aprimo and continue to serve key leadership roles. eCircle CEO Volker Wiewer will join both the Teradata EMEA Leadership team and the Aprimo Leadership Team as VP of Aprimo EMEA. In this role, he will report to Hermann Wimmer, President of Teradata EMEA, and Bob Boehnlein, President of Aprimo.

Also in Q1 2012, Silverpop acquired CoreMotives, a marketing automation solution that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In October 2011, Silverpop also acquired PlacePunch, a location-based marketing platform.  PlacePunch has doubled its revenue since the acquisition, according to a Silverpop press release.

In March, Silverpop was named Adobe’s digital marketing platform partner of the year. The honor, which was presented at the Adobe Partner of the Year awards ceremony during the company's annual Digital Marketing Summit, recognizes top performing partners who drove joint opportunities for both companies, achieved year-over-year growth, and aligned to develop and deliver solutions to mutual clients.

“Last quarter is one I am especially proud of, in that we outperformed aggressive goals in nearly every aspect of our business,” noted Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey. “From new sales to partner relationships to our expanding product and services offerings, Silverpop experienced tremendous success and the momentum continues.”

Nussey noted that Silverpop is focused on investing in its customers’ success by helping them engage their own customers and prospects with relevant and personal interactions.

New Silverpop customer Public Relations Society of America highlighted this capability as a key reason for choosing Silverpop. 

“We have a very segmented audience, including current members, students, and prospects as well as sub-groups within those audiences, such as specific chapters, chapter leadership and volunteers,” said PRSA’s Senior IT Director Alex Ortiz. “Given all the messages we need to share, we felt that we were simply sending too much email, too often. We selected Silverpop to help us meet our goal of reaching those who want to hear from us, how and when they want to do so. With Silverpop we will be able to deliver timely and relevant communications, while reducing overall volume and increasing recipient satisfaction.”

“The way organizations are going to market and positioning themselves for success is directly connected to their initiatives set as an organizations, as well as how successful they are in driving buyer interest to their products and services,” said Chuck Dulde, Senior Director of Customer Value, SAVO Group. “The ligature between those two is sales execution — which everyone in the organization owns. The biggest challenge we see today is that whatever is in that sales execution gap essentially is like DNA. There are some topical similarites, but when you get into the granularity of what needs to be implemented for repeatable success, there’s a wide gap.”

Dulde told DemandGen Report that these challenges are largely due to B2B organizations’ inability to distinguish between the buyer and sales processes.

Sales Collaboration Stuck At Starting Gate

Another SAVO poll found that 69% of businesses with enterprise social collaboration tools have not experienced an increase in sales. The results are from a live poll of nearly 100 participants conducted during one of SAVO’s educational webinars, “Socialize with Purpose: Aligned to Growth Initiatives.”

The SAVO poll also revealed that sales collaboration technology is not being used to its full intent. Nearly 80% of respondents stated that less than half of their sales teams are using the social collaboration tools the business implemented. This lack of usage occurs despite more than 46% of businesses stating that social collaboration tools have been available to the internal workforce for one or more years.

 “The survey results here paint a little bit more of a cautionary tale,” noted Dan Schleifer, Senior Director of Marketing, SAVO Group. “Without a defined purpose behind technology implementations, they may offer qualitative benefits to the company as a whole, but they’re not going to drives sales performance.”

While the adoption of social technologies continues to accelerate, few of the tools have demonstrated a discernible return. Schleifer noted that enterprise social collaboration tools are often helpful for general purposes and organizing community, but they don’t necessarily align well with B2B selling processes.

“The way that these tools tend to be rolled out is very often from the CIO’s office, as well as the IT department, and rolled out to the whole company,” he said. “But they haven’t been deployed in a thoughtful and meaningful way by the sales organization. Sales needs to understand organization-wide expectations to know exactly what benefits will be derived from it.”

Moreover, Dulde emphasized the tactical need for an information collection and governance framework in order to optimize the effectiveness of sales collaboration tools.

“Salespeople don’t want to dig for information,” he noted. “It’s easier to call up a sales engineer to ask questions. The ability to categorize information as part of a governance activity and then situationally push it on a mobile device — or link to CRM records — for a unique selling situation, empowers sales with the information they need in the moment. The success of social collaboration tools truly hinges on how the organization processes information and pushes it out to sales.”

SAVO will host the fourth sales enablement webinar in the series on May 8, titled  “Enable the Challenger: Your Secret Weapon.” Registrants are eligible to receive a free Sales Enablement Maturity Benchmark assessment for their organizations.

HomeStar also offers a non-outsourced option to real estate companies that prefer to manage their lead process in-house, providing them with the systems, processes and technology platform accessible across all levels of their real estate operations.

“By integrating our online conversion strategies and proprietary business processes with market-leading virtual call center technology and the LeadMaster engine, HomeStar will be able to offer unparalleled service and optimum conversion rates to its real estate clients,” noted Michelle Taylor, President of HomeStar Broker Solutions.

LeadMaster offers a multi-function cloud-computing software solution for sales and marketing professionals. The company provides technology designed to enable sales and marketing teams to receive and update leads; add web site visitor information to CRM systems in real time; initiate drip marketing, lead nurturing and email tracking; and provide other automated functionality.

“This relationship provides LeadMaster with a partner that can customize solutions and workflow automation specifically designed to dramatically improve conversion rates on Internet property inquiries in real estate,” said Russell King, CEO of LeadMaster. “LeadMaster embraces partners from business consultants and call centers to ad/marketing agencies and value added resellers.”

One key new feature allows marketers to profile users based on factors such as website activity, allowing them to craft customized offers even when the user is not yet identified within a company's marketing database. The solution also employs progressive profiling to capture and reconcile user information on the fly – allowing marketers to gather user data incrementally, without asking for the same data repeatedly.

Consistent Offers Across Multiple Channels

The new capabilities extend to crafting consistent customer and prospect offers across multi-channel marketing campaigns. If a prospect, for example, clicks through on an email offering a product discount, Neolane Interaction will automatically qualify the prospect and reconcile them with the original email recipient. The idea, according to Neolane, is to offer a consistent set of marketing messages and offers across email, web, and other channels – thus avoiding "marketing fatigue" or frustrating users with an inconsistent set of marketing messages.

Another major new feature in Neolane Interaction adds the ability to generate marketing offers using external product catalog information. Based on a user's existing profile or online behavior, for example, the solution can browse an offer catalog based on SKU numbers, product availability, price or other factors – and then dynamically offer the prospect an appropriate discount, product option or other choice.

'Conversational Marketing' For B2B Firms

"These enhancements to Neolane Interaction [give] marketers the ability to capture intelligency, even through anonymous interactions, and generate real-time offer recommendations," said Neolane President and CEO Stephane Dehoche in a company news release. "Neolane Interaction is at the core of conversational marketing, providing brands with the performance they need to take advantage of every contact opportunity to propose the right offer at the right time."

Neolane promotes its solutions to both the B2B and B2C markets, both of which can benefit from the ability to profile prospects and to target them with appropriate promotions or offers. Neolane also touts its history as a single code-base platform, rather than as a solution built through third-party acquisitions, and it gives B2B marketers the ability to integrate with CRM and SFA systems such as salesforce.com, Oracle/Siebel and Microsoft CRM Dynamics.

"Simplicity and service are Pardot hallmarks, and we stayed true to this course again in Q1," said Adam Blitzer, Pardot COO and co-founder, in a company press release. "We made the product even easier to use, while also adding tools that improve a marketer's ability to implement, monitor and refine programs. And, we launched an all-new training program, including 18 complimentary classes. By continuing to put our customers' needs first, 2012 is off to a great start."

Pardot added a number of additional new features and services during the first quarter of 2012, including new email, form and search engine optimization tools; a user training program; and a new client community for sharing best practices and communicating with Pardot team members.

"The SEO tools provide insight into a company's digital brand that wasn't readily available until now," said Zach Bailey, vice president of products at Pardot. "Combined with other Pardot tools, marketers can quickly turn new data into actionable, effective programs. It's just one more way we are simplifying the many tasks that small business marketers juggle on a daily basis."

Other marketing automation vendors reported equally strong numbers during the quarter. Marketo recently announced 130% year-over-year revenue growth, while Act-On Software reported a 350% increase in revenue during Q1.

"While it may be a formidable task for marketers to collect the needed data," Rice stated, "in these economic times it is critical that organizations have a method to quantify ROI to justify an investment in email marketing."

A New Focus On Hard ROI
According to the study, nearly two-thirds of CMOs now expect to use "financial return on investment" to determine the value of their email marketing programs – a significant increase from 2011. At the same time, other value metrics, including post-click metrics and email performance metrics, are now considered less useful for measuring the value of email campaigns.

The study also found that 67% of the marketers surveyed expect to spend more on email marketing in 2012, and nearly one in five will spend at least 30% more than they did in 2011. Just 3% of the respondents said they plan to spend less on email marketing in 2012.

Some other key findings from the survey include:

-        Marketers cite "growing and retaining subscribers" as their top email marketing priority, with "delivering relevant content" coming in second place.

-        The most commonly cited email marketing challenge is "integrating email data with other data systems," and many marketers also cite inadequate staffing and skills as barriers to success.

-        Mobile-ready content is gaining prominence, as 33% of B2B marketers say they now craft email that is optimized for tablets and smartphones.

Testing And Learning Go Hand In Hand
The MarketingSherpa study also found that most B2B marketers test various elements of their email campaigns. The catch is that relatively few of them are testing the right things: While the vast majority test elements like the subject line and message content, a much smaller group tests the use of landing pages or target audience choice – although the latter elements have a more significant impact on effectiveness.

"We found an opportunity for organizations to glean more knowledge from their own research by focusing more on a few strategic areas of the testing cycle," the report's authors concluded. "Only 15% of respondents said they routinely brainstormed new testing ideas, or took the time to define key metrics. Likewise, only 17% of marketers routinely reviewed the results and decided on follow-up tests." As a result, the report stated, many marketers are missing opportunities to identify the success factors in their email campaigns.

News of the acquisition comes on the heels of continued momentum in Marketo's customer acquisitions and revenue. The company reported more than 130% year-over-year revenue growth and nearly doubled its customer base. Additionally, the company posted significant growth in the enterprise segment, which grew new billings more than 400% year-over-year. Marketo currently serves more than 1,800 enterprise and mid-market customers globally.

“Social marketing campaigns and marketing automation have been like the proverbial two ships passing in the night, with most social marketing tools sitting in silos disconnected from mainstream marketing processes,” said Marketo President and CEO Phil Fernandez, in a company press release. “…By combining Crowd Factory with Marketo, marketing professionals can finally use integrated social campaigns to boost the reach and impact of every marketing initiative they undertake — at every step in the customer lifecycle.”

Through the acquisition, Marketo will combineits existing marketing automation aand analytical reporting with Crowd Factory’s platform for rapidly creating and deploying social campaigns, such as customer referrals or sweepstakes.

“Crowd Factory pioneered the idea of Social ROI by empowering marketers to push viral campaigns throughout the social web, and then track that valuable social activity back to individual influencers and conversions,” said Sanjay Dholakia, CEO of Crowd Factory. “This fits perfectly into the vision of marketing automation that Marketo has led: that all marketing activity matters and can be measured against the bottom line. We are excited to join the Marketo team and help companies of any size in any market segment generate more campaigns, more leads and, ultimately, more customers.”

Marketo will continue to support and invest in all current products and customers of both companies. The company will also introduce a new, unified product family in the near future for social campaign management, according to a press release. The company will share an inside view of its strategy with customers at the Marketo User Summit, May 22-24 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

In order to make it easier for nominees to be considered we have simplified the criteria for consideration, with plans to profile companies for accomplishments in integrating:

DATA- Enhance data integration to provide sales and marketing with optimal visibility into prospect and customer touch points;

SOCIAL- Manage and cultivate role in social communities to monitor conversations, refine marketing messaging and enable sales;

TARGETING- Segment prospects and customers to provide relevant content based on pre-determined attributes, such as digital behavior and activity, and/or interest level.

ONLINE EVENTS- Utilize online event/webinar platforms to enhance segmentation strategies, nurturing, scoring, data collection and application, as well as sales acceleration; and

SALES ENABLEMENT- Implement tools and tactics to help marketing empower the sales force to maximize prospect touch points and close deals.

The awards also will recognize the ability to establish:

• Systematic, repeatable processes for success by developing agreed-upon definitions and blueprints to optimize internal operations; and
• Improved conversion rates deeper in the funnel by providing targeted and relevant content.

 

To nominate an organization for consideration, click here to access the nomination form.

Deadline to submit nominations: June 1, 2012

 

Act-On also grew its employee base by more than 200% during the last year and continues to expand teams across functional areas including engineering, sales, customer service, marketing and finance. Additionally, Act-On appointed former Symantec executive, Atri Chatterjee, as Chief Marketing Officer.

 “Our continued growth in customers and new opportunities in the pipeline confirms a large untapped market that is underserved today,” said Raghu Raghavan, founder and CEO of Act-On Software, in a company press release. “We will continue to focus on delivering the most compelling marketing automation platform in the industry and ensuring the success of our customers.”

In other recent company news, Act-On released enhancements to its marketing automation platform this past March, including functionality designed to enable content creation, progressive profiling, search engine optimization and ROI reporting.

Additionally, Gleanster’s Gleansight benchmark report on marketing automation ranked Act-On “Best” in three categories: ease of deployment, ease of use and overall value. AlwaysOn also named Act-On an OnMedia 100 winner and an OnDemand One to Watch.